Ella’s Kitchen partners with Terracycle to upcycle used pouches

Filed in Blog, Guest Posts by on April 1, 2010 2 Comments
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Alison Lindley, Ella's Mum from "Ella's Kitchen"

Alison Lindley, Ella's Mum from "Ella's Kitchen"

Once upon a long time ago I used to look wistfully at the excellent Ella’s Kitchen range of baby and children food. I LOVED the ingredients, but was not so enamoured with their plastic pouches, which were non recyclable.

Things change though and Alison Lindley is here today to share her exciting news about the future of recycling with her product range.

As well as being Ella’s mum, Alison Lindley is Head of Giving Stuff Back at Ella’s Kitchen. Alison spends her days busy juggling being a mum and also down at Ella’s Barn (a converted cow’s shed) where she looks after the company’s environmental and ethical policies as well as their charitable initiatives. Ella’s Kitchen creates 100% organic baby and kids’ foods which are available in all the major supermarkets and many independent retailers.

Ella’s Kitchen was set up by Paul Lindley as he passionately believes that our daughter, Ella, and her generation should have the opportunity to eat better food and to discover that healthy food can be tasty and fun. Since we created the company four years ago, our main mission has always been to get more kids eating more healthy, organic food. Alongside this goal, we are also committed to working towards sustainability and producing our food with as little impact on the environment as possible.

All these considerations came into play when choosing the packaging for our products. Everyone eats using all their senses and so pouches were the obvious choice for our baby foods, smoothie fruits and pasta sauces as they are tactile, squeezy, brightly coloured and fun. Plus they are hugely handy for mums and dads to use when out and about. Pouches also allow us to preserve the food naturally without adding any preservatives or additives so that Ella’s Kitchen food is just like you would make at home.

From an environmental angle, pouches use 80% less materials than alternative forms of packaging. An independent audit of the life cycle of our pouches has shown that the energy used, and the environmental impact made, when making, transporting and destroying them is significantly less than PET plastic bottles, tetra packs and glass. So, the lightness of the packaging is just another reason why pouches are the best choice of packaging for our products. Check out the helpful stuff on our website to find out more about our packaging.

The one issue remaining was that most councils are unable to recycle our pouches. That’s why we were really excited when we came across Terracycle. Terracycle’s upcycling brigades are massive in the US but Ella’s Kitchen is only the second company to run a programme with Terracycle here in the UK following Kenco’s launch last year.

So, how does it work? Rather than throwing their empty Ella’s Kitchen pouches in the bin, mums and dads can now collect them all together, pop them in an envelope and then sign up on Terracycle’s website and download a free postage label to send the pouches to Terracycle’s warehouse in Essex. Schools, nurseries and other kids’ clubs can also get together to start collecting all of Ella’s Kitchen pouches as well as our pack’o’snack and bakey bakies bags too.

Terracycle will then upcycle the empty packaging material into exciting, new products such as baby bibs, mums’ bags, kids’ pencil cases and lunch boxes. Waste pouches and unused laminate is also collected by Terracycle from our manufacturers and upcycled, thus reducing our waste output even further. The upcycled bags and other products should be on sale sometime later this year.

An additional incentive for everyone to get involved is that, for every pouch they send to Terracycle, 2p is donated to their chosen charity or school so they are raising funds for a good cause too. Plus kids will, hopefully, be educated and inspired by this easy, fun new way to recycle.

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About the Author ()

I am a long time supporter of the Green and Sustainable lifestyle. After being caught in the Boscastle floods in 2004, our family begun a journey to respect and promote the importance of Earth's fragile ecosystem, that focussed on reducing waste. Inspired by the beauty and resourcefulness of this wonderful planet, I have published numerous magazine articles on green issues and the author of four books.

Comments (2)

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  1. greenflag says:

    Terracycle
    This is a really good idea. I hope they expanded the range of products you can send them.

  2. Mrs Green says:

    @greenflag: Hi Greenflag; it will be great if they expand their range of recyclable products. I love your site by the way – I want to have a go at homemade pizza now 🙂

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